Conversation with
Marietta McCarty
Monday, April 11

10:30 a.m.
Room F-133, Pungo Building
Virginia Beach Campus
Reception and book
signing following

Marietta McCarty, Philosopher

To Marietta McCarty, philosophy is to the human mind what the wonders of nature are to the global environment, and she has brought her passion for philosophy and its life-affirming implications to countless school children across central Virginia and elsewhere for over twenty years. The author of the national bestseller, Little Big Minds: Sharing Philosophy With Kids, as well as the Nautilus Award Winner, How Philosophy Can Save Your Life: 10 Ideas That Matter Most, Ms. McCarty is firmly convinced that mental clarity paves the way for good living. Using music, art, poetry, literature and service activities to address philosophical concepts such as compassion, happiness, humanity, and justice, Ms. McCarty has worked with professional educators, parents, and volunteers to help children develop fulfilling, joyful lives. Ms. McCarty holds a Master’s degree in philosophy from the University of Virginia and spent many years teaching philosophy at Piedmont Virginia Community College in Charlottesville.

KEYNOTE EVENT

Keynote Address by Robert Hass
Monday, April 11
7:00 p.m.
TCC Roper
Performing Arts Center
Norfolk Campus

Reception and book
signing following

Robert Hass, U.S. Poet Laureate

A former Poet Laureate of the United States (1995-97), Robert Hass has won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for his poetry collection, Time and Materials. While serving as Poet Laureate, Dr. Hass’ deep commitment to environmental issues led him to found River of Words, an organization that promotes environmental and arts education in affiliation with the Library of Congress Center for the Book. Celebrated since 1973, when his volume of poetry, Field Guide, was chosen by Stanley Kunitz for the Yale Younger Poets Series, Dr. Hass is also, as noted by Poetry Foundation, “recognized as a leading critic and translator… of the Polish poet [and Nobel prize winner] Czeslaw Milosz and Japanese haiku masters Basho, Buson, and Issa.” As Poet Laureate, Hass was an activist, visiting businesses and civic groups to promote poetry and engage non-academicians in promoting literacy and environmental issues. In 2010, besides his teaching at the University of California at Berkeley, Dr. Hass released his newest poetry volume, The Apple Trees at Olema: New and Selected Poems.

Bob Reiss, Writer

Bob Reiss, a former Chicago Tribune reporter and correspondent for Outside Magazine, has been published in such diverse publications as The Washington Post Magazine, Smithsonian, Parade, and Rolling Stone. His non-fiction work, The Coming Storm, has been cited by Bill McKibben in the New York Observer as “The most readable and intelligent summary of global warming science and politics I have ever read.” Mr. Reiss has published fourteen novels under his own name and an additional five (the Conrad Voort detective series) under his pseudonym, Ethan Black. His most recent novel (under his given name), Black Monday, chronicles the collapse of the world as we know it when a genetically engineered microbe destroys the world’s oil supply system. Black Monday has been optioned by Paramount and is being developed for a major motion picture.

Noah Hutton, Filmmaker

The son of actors Timothy Hutton and Debra Winger, Noah Hutton spent a great deal of his childhood on film sets, where he developed a passion for filmmaking. In 2008, after graduating from Wesleyan University, he directed his first major film, Crude Independence, a documentary that examines the impact of the largest oil discovery in the history of North America on the tiny North Dakota town of Stanley. The film was an official selection of the 2009 SXSW Film Festival and won Best Documentary Feature at the 2009 Oxford Film Festival. Currently, Hutton is filming year one of a planned ten-year documentary film exploring The Blue Brain Project, an attempt led by neuroscientist Henry Markram to simulate an entire human brain, neuron by neuron, in a massive virtual simulation on IBM supercomputers.

Earl Swift, Journalist

Known for over twenty years to readers of the Virginian-Pilot, Earl Swift’s feature stories earned him a reputation for powerful and scrupulous narrative reporting. An avid outdoorsman, Swift has through-hiked the Appalachian Trail, circumnavigated the Chesapeake Bay by sea kayak, and traveled the 435-mile length of the James River by foot, canoe, and kayak. Swift expanded the 22 daily Virginian-Pilot dispatches from his James River odyssey into Journey on the James: Three Weeks through the Heart of Virginia, published in 2001 by University of Virginia Press. Swift has been a Fulbright fellow, PEN finalist, and five-time Pulitzer Prize nominee. His history of the interstate highway system, The Big Roads, due from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt next spring, chronicles the enormous environmental impact of this massive construction project. Swift’s stories have also appeared in Parade, Best Newspaper Writing, and River Teeth.

Reading by B. H. Boston
Thursday, April 14

7:00 p.m.
Studio Theatre,

Pass Building
Chesapeake Campus

Reception and book
signing following

B.H. Boston, Writer and Poet

Currently Managing Editor of Poetry International at San Diego State University, B. H. Boston received his BA in English from Cal State University, Fresno, and his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of California at Irvine. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2006, Boston’s work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies over the years.  A book of his early poems, Only the Living, was published by Helix House Press, and his latest collection of poems, By All Lights, available through Tebot Bach Press, moved Carolyn Forche to observe, “In the spiritual urgency of these poems, a world is brought forth in its fecundity, the indissoluble blue world, radiant and fragile. Boston is a visionary naturalist, rescuing moments that will not recur with a lyric force harnessed only by the wisest of poets.”

For more information, please call 757-822-1122 or TTY 757-822-1248

TCC provides  reasonable accommodations to attendees with disabilities. If you require a sign language interpreter, or other accommodations in order to participate in the event, please contact  Linda Harris, Disability Services Coordinator at 822-1213, or 822-1225. We will require such notification of your needs at least two weeks in advance of the event in order to ensure your needs are met.

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